For Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Stories of Social Injustice, the book’s subtitle preceded the content. I chose to interpret it this way: my contributions needed to be more appalling in this second volume. I wanted to push the envelope without devolving into a tiresome description of disgusting circumstances, which is typical in so-called “extreme horror” stories. Appalling Stories 2 isn’t extreme horror, though many of the events described therein are pretty horrible.

People like to ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” I never know how to answer this question. Even my dental hygienist asked me once. I replied, “In the dentist chair,” which elicited the hoped-for laugh. A novel has to have more than one idea. You can get away with just one in a short story.

For the story Her Bodies, Her Choice, I didn’t come up with the idea myself. Rick Canton, a friend of mine who I used to work with on the website The Loftus Party provided the central concept. On Twitter he asked a prominent feminist, “Why’re you so excited for abortion? Do you eat aborted babies or something?” I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the idea. He’s since been kicked off of Twitter for similar offenses. But his question planted the seed: feminists eating fetuses. Disgusting. Horrifying. Compelling. But I had to flesh it out. It had to make sense, it had to entertain, and it had to fit within the theme of the Appalling Stories anthology. The story I eventually came up with takes this idea and runs with it, turning it into a dreadful, far-reaching conspiracy. It even includes a description of a photo I saw in a book on witchcraft decades ago: a woman’s skeleton, freshly disinterred, with huge, heavy screws at her knees and elbows. They’d screwed her bones together to keep her from rising from the grave. That’s how much they feared her, even in death.

My other story, The Deprogram, came as a result of watching the 1982 movie Split Image, starring James Woods and Brian Dennehy. In it, a young man enters a Bhagwan-style cult and his desperate parents try to get him out. The same author who gave me the idea for the Bake Me a Cake story in the first Appalling Stories anthology suggested I watch it, though I can’t remember the context. The movie wasn’t bad, everyone played to type, and it provided fertile ground for a story: in a social justice future, people would have to be brainwashed to accept ludicrous notions like gender being a social construct instead of a biological fact of nature. Political correctness not just run amok, but extended into its necessarily oppressive and unpleasant future, where certain ideas are criminalized and rebelling against the accepted mode of thinking is punishable by government-issued lobotomy. But it had to be realistic. Like the previous story, it had to make sense and fit the theme.

You, the reader, will have to decide if either story was appalling enough, or even more appalling than the previous volume. And I’m not talking about the writing.

Between extensive Christmas prep and getting out there and having a good time, I skipped last week’s blog post. Apologies.

2018 was a remarkable year in many respects, both good and…less good. Despite the day-to-day frustrations and unmet expectations that occur in every 24-hour period, I work hard to practice gratitude. Sometimes I’m less successful in the moment, sometimes more. My wife and son are both healthy and active, so as far as that story goes, I could just close the book and say it’s all good. Anything that happens outside of that is gravy. Frosting. Sugar on top. Pick your culinary metaphor.

That’s the story. Here’s the plot.

Over this year I released two books. The first was The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel, the third novel in my Armageddon trilogy. Nobody wants to hear how difficult writing a book was, but still, this one was pretty damned hard. It was so hard I had to take breaks to produce other books while I was writing it. Part of the difficulty was psychological: it was comfortable working on the same project for several years, and who wants to leave the Comfort Zone? The other part was just wrapping up everything in a way that made sense, satisfied the reader, and examined the themes of faith and humanity I wanted to explore. It’s up to the reader to determine its quality or lack of. The second of 2018’s books was Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice. The sequel to 2017’s Appalling Stories, it continues the anti-PC, ripped-from-the-headlines theme, and showcases a number of authors’ short fiction work. Nobody else is doing anything quite like it, and I’m proud of Appalling 2.

Me, fresh out of the hospital

In January, my story A Haunting in Pennsylvania was published in Creators Unite Magazine, the Woman Power Issue. It’s neat when someone illustrates your writing and I’m pretty happy about that. In February, I wrote an evergreen piece on firearms in America. In April I watched the “important” horror film Get Outand confirmed, once and for all, that most movie reviewers are completely full of shit. In May, the horror site The Slaughtered Bird shut down; I enjoyed writing for them. June was a rough month for me: I spent the last week of May horribly ill, culminating in an 8-day hospital stay that I described here. While my hospitalization was a learning experience, it was still less than pleasant. I reviewed The Last Jedi in July, which got some notoriety in certain circles of Star Wars fandom. In August I reviewed David Angsten’s terrific novel Night of the Furies, and when you’re done reading this post, you need to run to Amazon and pick up Angsten’s entire Night-Sea Trilogy if you haven’t already. I tried to go home again in September with a review of Lord Foul’s Bane. October turned out to be a busy month: my story Dear Dad was published in Cinder Quarterly, the literary magazine from Taliesin Nexus, and I reviewed the wrenching film Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. It’s the hardest film I’ve ever watched. In November I invented the term Thanksgivingtime. You’re welcome.

Not much else happened that I’m prepared to talk about. We got a black kitten earlier in the year. He’s been good luck for us and is a fine little fellow. For Christmas I got a sous vide machine.

What’s coming in 2019? I’m working with Ray Zacek on a satirical book that I hope to have out in the first quarter of the year. Still working on a science fiction adventure series that I’m sure you’ll enjoy: something a bit lighter than my previous fare. I doubt I’ll have it ready by 2019, but who knows?

Thank you, as always, for reading. May the coming year bring you blessings and favor from God, who is all good all the time. May you be as fortunate as I in both family and fortune, and may you remember from where it all springs.

Get the Greek: A Chrismukkah Tale remains my favorite piece of writing: a comic short story of one man’s attempt to end the commercialization of both Christmas and Hanukkah. As the best things in life are free, I’m offering it for the low, low price of $0.00 from today until December 22! Here’s an exclusive excerpt:

Judah Maccabee spat a curse, reached out to slam the laptop shut, and threw both hands in the air instead. Rivka kept telling him it was a waste of time watching World Jews Tonight. Why do you want to raise your blood pressure with all that bad news, she would ask. Earth’s a billion miles away on a whole other plane of existence, for cat’s sake.

“Because it matters,” he grumbled in response to her imaginary carping. “I didn’t die watching my own guts spill out on the hills of Elasa so Jews could put up Hanukkah bushes in December. They might as well burn offerings to Apollo.”

Rivka called out from the kitchen, “Did you say something, dear?”

Shaking his head as much to clear it as deny he had spoken, he replied, “Ah, no, honey. Just watching the news.”

“Well, dinner’s almost ready. Florence and Chaim’ll be here in five minutes.”

He fumbled around the surface of the desk, frowning. Where did I—

“Your sunglasses’re in the top right drawer,” Rivka supplied helpfully.

So, as my belated Hanukkah/early Christmas gift to you, click the link and get your free copy of Get the Greek before December 23!

In Appalling Stories 2, we sent out a call to writers to produce stories appropriate to the theme, and were amazed at the number of submissions. After a lengthy and occasionally blistering winnowing process, we settled on the ten best stories for this volume. From hilarious cautionary tales to science fiction yarns, from searing satire to supernatural horror, it’s a smorgasbord of fiction that represents the new counterculture, not the focus-grouped, watered-down PC trash that’s infested the literary market.

With a foreword from Christian Toto, editor of HollywoodInToto.com, Appalling Stories 2 is the perfect antidote to today’s aggressively woke times. Check out the book that Daniel Greenfield of Sultan Knish called, “A grim, hilarious and no-holds-barred dive into the terrible social justice future and its even more terrible present!”

Obsidian Point is proud to reveal the cover to the new counterculture short fiction anthology Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice.

From the back cover:

The virulent disease of political correctness has infected the body politic from nose to toes, and even the field of literature isn’t immune. The best way to inoculate yourself against this Social Justice Warrior-carried malady is to read entertaining, old-school fiction that neither pulls punches nor takes prisoners.

That’s where Appalling Stories 2 comes in. The spiritual sequel to the top-selling anthology Appalling Stories, this new collection brings you ripped-from-the-headlines tales of short fiction written to make you laugh, make you cry, and even make you think. Just a little.

In these pages you’ll read stories of humanity’s terrifying First Contact with extraterrestrial life, the horrifying secret behind today’s radical feminist movement, what happens when the wokest man you know discards the last of his White Privilege, and more. From a far-future history of America’s decline to disturbing tales of gun control gone wild, you’re sure to find something that will stick with you long after you’ve closed the book.

And the best part is that you’ll be making an SJW so mad when you tell him/her/zir what you’re reading.

My notes are written on legal pads and spiral notebooks. I did everything offline. I’ll let you know where I hid the original copies at the end of this video, but don’t just click to the end, okay? Watch the whole thing first. Do this for me. I know you hate me and think I’m a bitch and I don’t blame you, but please. Please. I can’t trust my parents. They’re probably part of this.

It sounds crazy and over-dramatic like…like in a movie, but the only reason you’re watching this is because I’m dead. It means they got me. My former friends and colleagues. If you’d seen my phone…I had writers from The Atlantic to The New York Times who’d take my calls on the first ring. Me. Not even 27 years old and people with bylines in The Daily Beast and The New Yorker knew my name. I was kind of a big shot. But one of them ratted me out for bringing them the story of the century. The millennium. Probably all of them did.

So yeah, I’m dead. It scares the hell out of me, but—

You know what? Forget it. I don’t know if you’re happy I’m dead or what. Maybe you are. I broke your heart, after all. I regret that. Not ending the engagement. Just hurting you. You didn’t deserve that. But I saw your wedding pictures on Instagram like two years after we split up, so I guess you weren’t too, well, broken up about it. She’s pretty. You two look happy.

—

I guess if you hadn’t broken things off with me for taking care of our little…indiscretion, I’d’ve split up with you. It makes sense now, but back then I just felt hurt. With a degree in Women’s Studies from Vassar, pretty much the only option I had after graduation was VP of HR at a Nestle subsidiary while you saved the world one hedge fund at a time. But not long after you proposed, my senior adviser introduced me to some friends of hers, who introduced me to some friends of theirs, and, well, I could either follow your plan for us, or my plan for me.

So I went with me. The abortion and your throwing me out of your life over it was just the icing on the cake. But it launched me into my new career.

I started as an intern. Paying my dues. It sucked because I had to keep asking my parents for money to afford rent and food, but I learned a lot that first year. At Planned Parenthood you can’t claim that sexism in the workplace is keeping you from earning a living wage. I think they were monitoring me. Seeing how committed I was, how hard I’d work. After burning my bridges with you I had nothing else to do, so I threw myself into it.

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Stay tuned for more information on Appalling Stories 2: More Appalling Tales of Social Injustice!